


Hi-Strung

by LadyMaverick



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Body Modification, Changing Tenses, First Time, Fix-It of Sorts, Heart-to-Heart, KinkTerror2019, Kinkmeme, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Masturbation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Piercings, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Rough Sex, Suspension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-11-26 02:05:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20922362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMaverick/pseuds/LadyMaverick
Summary: Some wounds heal quickly, aided by a well-placed stitch, or the press of a gentle kiss. Others hang low and linger, content to throb and itch and eventually scar. And mental wounds? Well. Hannibal likes to collect instances of these, tucked away deep within the halls of his Mind Palace. Will offers up one more for the collection - his image, suspended by so many wires, his likeness frozen like glittering glass.After all... Wounds cannot weep or deepen when encased in amber.





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BelladonnaWyck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelladonnaWyck/gifts), [nephila_clavipes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nephila_clavipes/gifts).

> Yes, yes, I know I'm posting my KinkTerror entries in the wrong order... There's a good explanation I swear (flu!). Here's chapter 1 of 3, written for my beloved nephila_clavipes and BelladonnaWyck, who provided the inspiration with their lovely writing prompt. Cheers!

Chapter One - The Beginning

_For: nephila_clavipes & BelladonnaWyck_

Getting away from it all had been a mutual decision, though Will found it was Hannibal that had suggested it and in turn had been so surprised he had tripped over his own feet mid discussion. It truly was a marvel, Hannibal’s ability to situate himself so deeply into his subconscious, and it left an acrid bonfire taste on his tongue whenever his own thoughts were voiced in a rather richer baritone. Hannibal had suggested a holiday of all things. A fucking _holiday_.

It was hard to believe the man would be so eager to brave the wilderness once again so soon after their dramatic flight into the night, the miles and miles of breathless sprinting made agony as their splintered wounds wound themselves into a mesh of uneasy trust and muted discontent. It had brought something entirely unexpected along for the ride, much to Will’s amusement.

Between the fall and them re-establishing a secure line of communication with Chiyo, Will had witnessed Hannibal at his lowest point and found himself pondering the energy it took for the man to handle their misfortunes with such grace and pride as he managed. It was though the bullet he had taken to the abdomen were a mere inconvenience. Sheer dumb luck had dictated that they both survive their plunge with relatively few new injuries, though the illness that plagued them both after the fact had been a hard reminder that not all physical injuries were alike, and the numbing heat-chill that had slowly and methodically wormed its way through their limbs had settled in to stay for the long haul.

It was the kind of sickly miasma that clung to your lungs for weeks at a time and made every other minor ailment stack against you. That niggling cough in the back of your throat from the cold you caught mid-summer, the itch that came with the onset of an allergy - all individual pests in their own right, but outright crippling when combined in sweet, hellish tandem with the pendulum of a stuttering heartbeat as the joyous conductor.

It had, of course, hit Hannibal first. Will was quick to find the man was the literal worst patient ever in the history of the human race, thank you very much. How anybody could ask for assistance going to the toilet and still grab his wrist and correct him on the correct configuration for folding the toilet paper to use was utterly and unashamedly beyond him. Even at that low point, Hannibal had never taken his eyes away from Will. His stare were as unwavering as the rising and setting of the sun, and Will knew the man was desperately trying to convince himself that the fever dream he was currently dragging himself ass-first through was real, and yes, Will was here to stay.

A few weeks into Hannibal’s recovery, it had then hit Will. Though he handled his quivering stance with just as much grace as Hannibal had (not counting the few close calls where he had put a hand out to the wall to brace himself and found himself too far away), his stubbornness was entirely unmatched and it was on the fifth day that he collapsed in the shower after refusing assistance and hit his head sharply on one of the taps. He wasn’t quite conscious enough to remember the pain of the injury, but occasionally, when the world had slowed to a crawl on its axis and the winds became nothing, he could almost hear the echo of Hannibal’s voice berating him for being a reckless idiot and the mockery of what would have been a tap equating to the end of William Graham. All in a worried, mothering tone, of course.

Even the hilarity of the situation hadn’t been able to stifle the affection from the quiver of his voice or the lingering tender press of his fingers. Will only wished he could remember it with more clarity. His body certainly did, in fits and starts as he woke from not so innocent dreams, a knuckle sandwiched between his teeth as he forced his juddering body to still. He wasn’t such a fool to pretend Hannibal had actually been asleep as he pretended to be on those nights, but for whatever reason, he hadn’t brought it up. It wasn’t like Will Graham had much more dignity to save.

Finally, weeks later saw them both back on their feet far north of the Canadian border, awaiting Chiyo. It was at that point that Hannibal had made Will swear he wouldn’t try to feed him anything canned ever again, and he had relented on the condition that something so trivial as an impromptu plummet into the ocean would never again give him the worlds worst and most dramatic flu. An additional clause had been added afterwards – keep your bloody germs to yourself, Hannibal Lecter.

“I promise to only find myself wounded where you are decidedly the sole cause.” Hannibal quipped over the rim of his tea. Will had snorted in response, clinging to the side of the sofa as he righted himself from another near fall, then collapsed in a heap on top of it with everything below his knees hanging over the armrest. Hannibal had only chuckled and appreciated the view.

And, so, they found themselves locked within a stalemate. Hannibal had yet to find any more baby carrots on his plate though, so had taken the whole discussion as one more victory. “The weather here will turn colder sooner than you think. I suggest you pack warm clothes as soon as you can find your feet without injuring yourself further.”

“Gee, thanks Doc.”

A week later, they set off into the cold once again, their packs laden with supplies and opportunity stretched endlessly before them.


	2. Doubts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I lied. 4 chapters instead of 3. More content though... right? *sweatdrop*

For: nephila_clavipes & BelladonnaWyck

With miles of snowy wilderness around them, the sheer echoing nothingness brings its own challenges. Hannibal finds himself more in his element than Will had often seen him, bar the kitchen, and Will watches in silence as Hannibal stalks carefully between the bare trees, his heavy boots deftly avoiding gnarled roots with care. He exudes more grace than his hiking attire should grant, really, and the thought brings an uneasy smile to Will’s face – one he quickly turns away to hide so Hannibal will be non the wiser to his scrutiny. Lord knows he doesn’t need any more opportunities to preen and peacock, and Will tries and fails to fight down the inevitable urge to fuck with him from afar to see those admittedly beautiful feathers ruffled.

Hannibal hears subtle movements behind him but only pauses as a knife whizzes over his shoulder to lodge itself into the trunk of a particularly large tree to his right. The squirrel pierced there dies instantly, the chill slowing the drip of its blood to molasses, and Hannibal turns to meet Will’s steely gaze with an arched eyebrow. Around them, the wind picks up and whistles between dead branches.

“We need to talk. We can’t just… continue on like this.”

“I agree”, Hannibal replies as he glances back to the squirrel. “Tonight, once our thoughts have settled. Though I hope you don’t intend on eating this.”

Will steps forwards, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. His hot breath comes out in uneven puffs, betraying his anxiousness, though the thought doesn’t bother him so much as his own extensive lack of self control. “I’ve settled enough, don’t you think?” He purposefully avoids the question about lunch, and a subtle shiver finds its way down his spine as Hannibal’s lips curl in disgust to reveal uneven teeth so rarely displayed.

The knife is pulled from the trunk with one swift decisive jerk, and Hannibal catches the squirrel by the tail. As he does his brows furrow in thought, for the night before he had awoken to the sound of Will screaming and clawing at his bedroom door. It gave him plenty of room for doubt. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

-

Will sat deep in thought by the open campfire. It was particularly large, a little too much so for their purposes, and it crackled loudly as it seared the squirrel speared over it. Hannibal had vanished into the trees some time ago, and with the snow falling around him gently, Will found himself drifting away as time became a background construct to the scene playing out in flashes before his eyes. It was easy to lose himself to the orchestra of natural life around him. No doubt that had been Hannibal’s intention when he had dragged them out deep into the middle of nowhere, but Will had to admit, there was something grounding about spending time out beyond where the clutches of modern civilisation could grasp.

Images of Dolarhyde’s back hitting the slabs of the patio hard seduces him as he stares with wide eyes into the orange-yellow smoulder of the flames before him. The noise, in particular, is especially vivid, and Will sees him fall and then crumple with all the finality of the last wheezed psudo-rattle of his lungs. A small not-quite smile makes the corners of his lips twitch once, just as hard and as abrupt as their own fall to the waves below. Its more of a tic, really. He knows he hasn’t been the only one to notice that it has been happening more and more frequently as their strength returned, though he feels significantly less in the know regarding the root cause.

_Extreme acts of cruelty require a high level of empathy._

_See? See._

_You righteous, reckless, twitchy little man._

_Ready or not, here he comes._

“Will.”

His eyes snap up – _twitchy twitchy_. “Hannibal.”

In Hannibal’s arms he holds a bundle of short branches, and Will watches him warily as they are dropped into a pile below a nearby tree. They regard each other for several long moments, the fire between them loud, and from where Will sits, it was easy to believe they exist within their own impenetrable winter snow-globe. All fun and games, until some kid ham-hands it and it shatters against the ground.

“You were gone when I returned. Where did your mind take you?”

Will swallows roughly, forcing himself into a smile that is more grimace than anything. “Away.”

Hannibal’s eyes crinkle at the corners in idle amusement. “Cliffs and dragons again?”

“Cliffs and dragons.”

Hannibal sits opposite him, the fire between them a catalyst for open hearts and gaping wounds. He says nothing more on the matter as he removes his gloves and reaches towards their source of light. The flush on his cheeks extends down beyond his collar, and he openly enjoys Will’s scrutiny by lifting his chin up slightly to grant a better view. “So then. A discussion.”

“Is this to be another session?” Will asks, eyes homing in on the swell of the other man’s throat.

“If you like. Though, that would involve you being open with me Will, and I think we can both agree, you have not been as such for many a year.”

“We _can_ both agree. Do you think it’s possible for you to be as open with me as you’re wanting me to be with you?” Will replies easily, his tongue thick in his mouth. The knuckles on Hannibal’s hands turn a steadily deepening crimson as they sit there in silence once again. Will forces his gaze to rest upon the deepening shades of Hannibal’s hands as they’re warmed through, for they make a convenient and decidedly more innocent focus point, and it saves him the strain of having to meet the other man’s gaze head on. “Actually, don’t answer that. We both know you’re incapable of such things. Instead, answer me this. What’s my expiration date?”

Will watches as Hannibal’s fingers curl into fists for a moment, his circulation returning. They had looked so _good _and _pale_. “Back on the topic of canned goods again, Will?”

“It’s easier for me to compartmentalise whatever this is if I accept that I’m alive because you will it so, and understand that said privilege may be rescinded at any point.” Will said, running his tongue over his teeth. He didn’t need to look up to know that Hannibal was watching him just as intently, lips parted oh so lightly, his own tongue flicking at the back of his own teeth. A snake. _Scenting_. “I’m bound to you with razor-wire so thin you would only be able to tell it was there to begin with at the point you tried to pull away. I would scream and bleed out all over your lovely, pristine kitchen. Again.”

“A lovely thought, but not one that accurately describes our situation. You’re alive for the simple fact that you yourself will it so. You will not die by my hand, directly or through proxy, William Graham. The world is far more interesting with you in it, and I’m not so certain I could bring myself to deprive it of you.”

“And the second part?”

Hannibal pauses in consideration, and Will watches as the light snowfall about them begin to accumulate in Hannibal’s hair. From where he sits, he can clearly see Hannibal’s locks are flecked with silver, peppered in amongst the blonder highlights, and he seems to glitter in the late afternoon sun. Hannibal sits back regally on his log, Will ponders, as though it were the armchair in his study all those years ago. Another session indeed. Time has simply aged him as it would wine in the barrel.

“Razorwire has its uses, and so far, you have not pulled away enough to be cut. Though I wonder how long you will follow me for, given the fact that the world believes Will Graham to be dead or worse. You could go anywhere, settle down with as many dogs as you would like, and yet you’re here with me. Should I expect your _companionship_ to have an expiration date?”

“You’ll never let the baby carrots drop will you?”

At this, Hannibal’s smile splits wide open to reveal the line of his uneven bite and Will shudders, happy to blame his uneasiness on the chill in the air. “I’m not going anywhere, Hannibal.”

“Your mind does tend to wander, though.”  


“As though you could be unhappy with only my body for company.” Will replies, his frown turning to a grin as in that moment Hannibal genuinely looks stunned, caught halfway between a heavy breath and an aborted swallow. He had truly meant it to be a jab for all those times he had been under the man’s influence whilst suffering with encephalitis, but the sight of Hannibal caught off kilter was a heady indulgence, and ever since the fall, Hannibal had taken it upon himself to lavish him with as much luxury as he could afford given their circumstances and he found he was developing a taste for it. The one good, crisp shirt they had found at their cabin was graciously draped around Will’s shoulders as Hannibal went without, and the remnants of a bottle of wine they had uncovered under their bed went to Will’s glass as Hannibal watched on with warmth in his eyes. He couldn’t say he minded.

“Changing the subject will get you nowhere, nor will it resolve your night terrors. You came to my door again last night. I’m sure the gouges in the woodwork did not escape your attention? Should I read into the fact that even if you won’t open up to me whilst conscious, you cling to me whilst asleep?”

The firelight flickers between them as the sun begins to set, emphasising the way Will’s face scrunches up, punctuating his loss for words. Although he had managed to escape his habit of answering every stress with a headache, his nights were still plagued with what was and would be. Will shakes more from the implication than the cold, but Hannibal simply regards him with a fond expression, and reaches behind his log for his backpack.

“I remember you describing your mind palace to me as though it were a twisting construct, ever changing. Dangerous.” Will says finally, rubbing his hands over his face until his cheeks bloom with blood. If they wanted to set up shop for the night, they would need to start unpacking their tent (singular, Will notes. Hannibal’s argument for preserving warmth hadn’t been so much an argument, in the end), and he would need to line his rod and return with something more substantial than a squirrel. Funnily enough, he notes as Hannibal pulls a travel-size pan from his pack, the man had complained less about that than he had the canned food, of which Will had stashed a few items in his own pack...

“Yes. I believe your own can much be described in the same way.” Hannibal replies in good humour. Funny how such topics that previously brought such exquisite sorrow would lighten his mood in the end. Full circle, as it were.

“My own could very well be the endless acres of untouched forest that surrounds your sprawling estate, Hannibal. Unfortunately, the holes in the floor seem to extend beyond your halls and into my woodland. I have many a twisted root as large as the trees themselves spun around much of what I supposedly reside over.” Will pulls his own pack forwards, and begins to unspool a coil of fishing line as his tone deadens, until he may as well be giving a lecture. His eyebrows furrow in concentration as the line wraps around his fingers, cutting off the supply of blood, and he swallows, the frigid air leaving his mouth dry. “It’s difficult to arrange and corral my thoughts when you revel in the opportunity to intrude with every step. How can you be so certain I ran to you last night for comfort, Hannibal?”

Hannibal hums as he sets the pan over the fire, watching as the tiny skillet begins to glow red. “I cannot, though I would like to think I could hold my own against you should you decide to attack me.” The words come easily to him, and he watches with poorly masked curiosity as Will begins to wind the wire more tightly around his fingers, the chill and pressure pinking the flesh as it puckers between the neat rows.

“The last man who approached me with that mindset lies dead, his majesty scattered to the wind like so many dry leaves. Kindling.” With that said, Will picks up his fishing rod from where it rests against a nearby tree. Snatching the roasted squirrel away from the flames, he walks off into the shadow of the woods behind him, content to finishing lining his rod without Hannibal’s scrutiny. Perhaps he would return with calmer thoughts and plenty of fish, a clearer head and an empty belly.

As he vanishes into the treeline, Hannibal wonders if he would return at all, and shakes his head to clear away the doubt. It had been far too long since he had been invited to chase, let alone been physically able – what paltry advantage would a thirty minute head start give William in the end?


	3. Developments

_For: nephila_clavipes & BelladonnaWyck_

Will stands with the gently babbling water up to his mid-thigh, the inclines of the banks on either side of him lit up with mini battery-powered torches as he casts his line forwards with a flick of his wrist. The motion is etched into his muscle memory, and comforting amongst the aches and pains he still feels weeks after the fall. Sinew and flesh, battered and stretched to breaking, and there he stands with his back straight in the glow of the sunset, his eyes resolutely forwards. He entirely ignores Hannibal’s presence.

Neither of the two men were as fluid as they used to be – for what small amount of grace Will found himself blessed with prior to ever meeting Hannibal Lecter, there was not an ounce of it left, even if he had the energy to try. And Hannibal? Will snorts as he watches the water pull his lure further down stream. Hannibal was nowhere near as physically _quiet _in his sheer presence as he thought he was. He feels a fish tug reluctantly on his hook and he knows the man is observing him silently, stood some distance away from him to his right, ‘concealed’ by the thick forest.

They are intertwined like a ball of line, each pulled fatefully into the irresistible gravitational pull of the other, and Will had not over exaggerated when he had told Hannibal they were starting to blur, all those years ago. He could almost visualise Hannibal’s eyes in the dark, watching him from a safe yet advantageous position, poised like the hunter he no longer pretended not to be. His pupils would be huge in the almost-dark, his shoulders would be hunched, feet firmly planted, ready to strike with graceful precision. Will had never seen him fight with the exception of the dragon, and even then, it was more dance than anything else, with more words shared between the connection of their eyes and by extension of soul than any real, spoken syllable they had shared over their years together.

Even as he had sponged the blood and grime from between Hannibal’s unconscious fingers, even after he had held a surgeon (one of Hannibal’s former colleagues no less!) at gunpoint as the wound in the man’s stomach was cleaned and stitched closed, he could sense Hannibal’s vitality tugging at the edges of his own consciousness, and he knew he would survive. He had then received news that somehow, by some glaring shred of improbability, the bullet had totally missed anything of real importance and the most Hannibal should expect is a few weeks of bed-rest, followed by a few months of quiet convalescence. That man truly did possess some bullshit-level luck.

He had recovered from the physical wounds in record time, and just as he was able to hold himself up unassisted and very much pleased because of the fact, their shared shivering and exhaustion won out and they spent the next weeks guarding the other as they slept in a shared bed in a seasonal hunting cabin in the ass-end of nowhere.

Will’s line tugs again and he shivers at the memory of waking up each morning with Hannibal half draped over him, both his eyes still open a crack as he waited for his turn to sleep. As practical as this was, given the fact that they were both in the wind to the FBI, it meant every single one of his nightmares had been witnessed, and he had been held and soothed even as the man playing guard-dog forcibly broke through his own exhaustion to keep Will safe and warm with his own fevered body heat. He had moved into his own room once they were both in the clear, if only to spare himself the questions that would no doubt follow. It had been a thin mockery of privacy. Will fingers the line, holding it to length as he watches the bob of the lure some distance away, his reminiscing pulling at his focus. He wonders just how many times he had awoken with an erection, and how many times he remembered it. How many times Hannibal had politely overlooked what he would have seen as a natural reaction to sleep, heat and touch. How many times he hadn’t overlooked at all.

_Sentimental psychotic bastard…_

_But he’s yours, isn’t he?_

The fish on his fine takes the bait suddenly, and Will spins on his heels in the water following its direction. The torches around him blind him to what lies beyond the treeline, but he knows, _he k__nows_ he is being watched, the corded muscles of his forearms surely being scrutinised. He throws his weight against his catch and begins to try reel it in properly, but the thought that the bones of his hands may end up as the centrepiece for Hannibal’s next kitchen drains away the saliva in his mouth, and the babble of the river steals away the whine that flees from him. Whatever it is, he thinks hysterically, it’s larger than he had hoped to catch. It would be all that was needed to feed their appetites.

_Well… Most of them._

The river around him flashes red as he strains, and for a moment, he’s back amongst the swirling hues of his nightmares with glittering, crimson tides lapping at his heels, then his knees, then his back as he is submerged with years worth of trauma in seconds. The Dragon’s laughter is piercing and deep, a shotgun shell in an opera house. Will’s feet slip and he goes down hard on one knee, and though the stream isn’t particularly deep, the shade of winter that will soon blanket everything in white and sheer, bone-aching cold is especially bitter already. He scrambles against his rod trying to keep himself afloat, but with the rushing water now up to his ribs, he can feel his strength being sapped away.

And then, Hannibal is with him, holding him up, another set of blisteringly hot hands clamped around his own as he is guided to shore. Will reels the fish in as his lungs gasp for air, the line tight enough to bend the tip of his rod, and then when the fish finally comes free of the water in a shower of red, Will finds himself being lowered down onto the frozen bank with Hannibal’s arms around his shoulders and his muttered words in his ear.

“Breathe Will, I need you to breathe. It’s just river water. Look closely, just water.”

He hadn’t even been aware he had been screaming at all. Hannibal tuts and leaves him for a moment to hang the struggling fish by its line on a nearby branch before he swiftly returns. He’s drenched, and even at a good distance, Will can see the freeze of his muscles, his posture stiff, joints unyielding as the frost quickly settles in bone deep. He sits at Will’s back and brackets him in with his legs and arms, forfeiting what little warmth he can afford. They both shiver violently in fits and starts, for where Will wore rubberised waders and _still_ managed to soak himself through, Hannibal certainly had not and still rushed into the freezing water to save him being submerged. They sit there in the semi-darkness, until their shivering begins to change hue, discomfort and chill giving way to entirely different shudders. Will returns to himself slowly, each inch clawed back with blunt nails as he rearranges the pieces of himself into a makeshift pile. Until his breathing steadies and his thoughts become the same hodge-podge patchwork quilt of anxiety and uncertainty as was familiar, sans blood. Until he could outright feel Hannibal’s hot breath against the back of his neck, and the hard outline of-

  
“H-Han-”

“Shh now, relax. I have you.” Will opens his mouth to speak again, but is silenced as a large hand clamps itself over his jaw. Huffing, he relaxes gradually back into Hannibal’s chest, bubbling humiliation rising up from his stomach as he tastes the salt of Hannibal’s skin against his lips. “You’re quite talkative when you’re dreaming, William. You’re not as unreachable to me as you seem to believe, nor quite as alone.”

The hand over his mouth guides his head upwards, until the fish he had caught was at eye-level. A thin trickle of blood shines over its scales, and a fresh wave of shivers assaults his skin in ripples of goose-flesh. He feels Hannibal’s lips brush the shell of his ear as he continues on, “See how your prey struggles against the line holding it, suspended in it’s final moments. Look how it’s motions slow as it begins to accept inevitability, and tell me, as it’s energy drains away, do you honestly think the pain registers in this creature? Or, do you think it lacks the agony of choice and consequence, and for this singular moment, simply is and can be?”

His hand falls away from Will’s jaw slowly and cautiously, as though he were expecting the man to lash out with his teeth and take a chunk for himself.

“I don’t understand what you’re asking, Hannibal. What point are you trying to make?” Will breathes, heart thumping wildly behind his ribs. “It’s dying. That’s… all.”

They stand together after a few moments, Will slowly rising to his feet. Hannibal’s shivers threaten to make him stumble as he takes down their catch and holds it up for Will to see by the line. The point of the hook glistens wickedly in the dim light from where it protrudes from the corner of its mouth, and the gash across Will’s cheek from the Dragon’s knife aches in sympathy. The fish stops moving entirely, glassy eyes wide and unseeing, less a living creature and more…?

“Ponder what I have said as we return to camp. We’re due a conversation, I think. Can you walk unaided?”


	4. Chrysalis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please mind the tags more seriously from here on out!

Chapter Four - Chrysalis

_For: nephila_clavipes & BelladonnaWyck_

Having gathered up his torches, they return to camp swiftly as the sun finally sets. It casts everything in a beautiful silver glow, and hides away the other predators lurking in the trees. Will pauses at the edge of the camp as Hannibal brushes closely past him, his hand lingering at Will’s shoulder as his chest slides against Will’s back. Before him sits a large tent which Hannibal quietly enters to change into warm clothes – apparently, Hannibal had taken the initiative to set it up before following him. He sets down his rod and begins rekindling their campfire, utterly without words to break the silence, until the large roaring blaze takes away that burden of responsibility for he owes Hannibal at least a ‘thank you’. He sits down heavily besides it, uncaring if he is a little too close to be entirely comfortable, for the heat banishes the bitter chill from his bones, and the sour thoughts follow. He watches in silence as Hannibal guts the fish, his motions as fluid as the flickering flames that sit between them, and it isn’t long before it is thrown into a pan, the ever shrinking silence around them punctuated by sizzling flesh.

“That night… as we fell...” Will begins, searching for the words. Hannibal continues to bustle around his pan, listening intently without emphasising the intensity of his attention with raised eyes and parted lips. Will is happy for the space to articulate without being prodded or led, and his words come a little easier for the courtesy. “I think that may have been the first time my thoughts just… stopped.”

When it is clear Will does not mean to continue without his replying, Hannibal nods to himself and flips the fish over in his pan, considering. “Even as your body rests, your mind ticks over in your skull, until dreams and nightmares become indistinguishable from one another.”

The fish is flipped again, seared flesh hitting the scorching iron with a dull thud. Their clearing is quickly permeated by delicious smells, and Will finds them raw and simple, thankful that they lack the usual aplomb that accompanied the man’s cooking. It reminded Will of a simpler times, frying over nothing but firewood with the sounds of a badly tuned radio to guide the rhythm of his stirring.

“I… can’t argue with that assessment.”

Hannibal gives him a strange smile, half amusement and half sadness – for all the pains they had caused the other, how strange it was that seemingly simple nightmares could continue to wound as they did. Will closes his eyes and allows himself to mentally reach out across the clearing, his senses tingling as they take in stimulus from all directions. It isn’t empathy, this time. Instead, creeping vulnerability, willingly given at that, sways between them like elastic drawn too tight. Will opens his eyes again – Hannibal stands staring at him, his hands manoeuvring their meal mechanically. Will takes a deep breath. Acceptance. After all their agonies, it seems he could still openly accept the man, cannibal, murder before him. He can let his arms fall by his sides and accept whatever fate came to him… so long as Hannibal remained at his back until the last.

“During the fall, in the moments before we hit the water, we were suspended almost in the amber of time, and for that moment, I couldn’t feel the wind, or the pain, or the guilt. All I could feel was you, your breath, your fingers gouging bruises into my arms and back as you accepted the end I dictated. I felt your tears, less the moisture as they fell, more tasted the salt and bitterness. Perhaps it was just the sea. Or perhaps I dreamt those up too.”

“You didn’t.” Hannibal said, voice flat as he removes the pan from the flames. “You asked me earlier in the day if you had an expiration date. I return that same question to you now. In your eyes, as much as they see and allow you to feel… Do I?”

Will sucks in a breath, tears prickling the corners of his vision. He refuses to let them fall. Not yet. “No. You once laughed and told me killing must feel good for God too. I let him decide our fate, and here we are, alive and a blight upon polite society.”

“Even as we exist far from it in this moment. Do you truly regret us, as we are now?”

It is then that Will’s tears fall, streaking a chill down his burning cheeks. Hannibal does him the courtesy of pretending not to notice, and Will in turn ignores how he is being rewarded with his own dignity in turn for exposing his soft underbelly. Truly, he considers, they are utterly fucked. He shudders another breath, Hannibal not quite unable to ignore the little hiccup he makes as he replies, “No. No regret. No guilt. Doing bad things to bad people feels good, Hannibal, but we’re bad people too.”

“Would bad things happening to you feel good? To me? Ease your conscience?”

“I...”

“You only need ask, Will.”

Another hiccup, this one punctuated with a bitter laugh. “You don’t know what you’re offering. Or, perhaps you _are_ fully aware. It wouldn’t be… good for me.”

Hannibal is silent for several minutes as he dishes out their portions. Will’s stomach growls loudly in response, conditioned to accept whatever Hannibal puts in front of him as being delicious, regardless of the source. “I would agree, with your current predicament at the very least.” Hannibal replies finally. “But if an outlet is needed, I can provide you one. A safe one. A controlled one.”

They have two pairs of hiking clothes each, and as the silent gaps in their discourse continue to stretch on, Will finds his clothes almost dry and knows Hannibal, even having changed, is still far worse off having lacked the appropriate gear at the time they took their impromptu icy plunge. As he lets himself fall backwards to lay alongside the flickering flames, he considers Hannibal’s words slowly, and with as much caution as he had ever approached the man after his stint in Baltimore’s mental ‘hospital’. He stretches, and brings himself back to that warped moment in the stream where everything ran as blood, and he fancies he can still smell the telltale hot copper stench of a fresh kill, the fish on his line a behemoth of metaphor, for it too was antlered and its eyes shone as jewels as it broke the surface of the water.

“Quid pro quo.” Will breathes, his muttering almost devoured by the combined cracking of pan and fire.

A plate is placed in front of him, and his stomach growls loudly once more. He rolls onto his stomach, the freezing earth hard and comforting underneath him, and opts to pick at the flakes with his fingers. Definitely dead, no blood, cooked to perfection. And definitely no antlers. He stares into the contained inferno before him, wondering.

_And, after all,_ a voice quipped in his head, _isn’t he a such an inferno indeed?_

“Indeed.” Hannibal replies, having heard him after all. Will idly wonders if there would ever be a day where he could express any facet of himself without Hannibal’s eerie perception cluing him in. “Quid pro quo. Don’t play with your food, Will. Eat, before it cools.”

-

Settling down into multiple layers of nightwear, they wrap themselves up in the thickest blankets they could have easily brought with them, the moon well and truly high in the sky. Since the fall, it had made more sense to continue sharing one bed, each having wordlessly agreed that at least in the beginning, security and the ability to keep the other safe was one of their highest priorities. As time went on, and their physical wounds knitted together into stronger meshed flesh, the practice continued, neither affected by pride or shame as their legs slotted together, one of them always staying awake for a time as the other drifted off. At least, until Will vacated to his own room to save his dignity, for where the shape of his wife pressed against his back had given him a warm, tender thrill, Hannibal’s proximity made his blood _boil_. He hadn’t been ready to address that at the time. In the harsh freeze of the forest, it made sense for them to scoot close again, their trials having made a mockery of the concept of intimacy, and Will found his eyes a little more open to possibility.

He lays draped over Hannibal’s right side, his leg crooked over the man’s thighs, listening to his light breathing. In, out. In, out. His face falls and rises gently from where it lay in the crook between Hannibal’s shoulder and chest, having found he simply fits as though the sculpt of his cheek were made especially for it. His right hand creeps up absent-mindedly to run callused fingers through thick, silvery chest hair, and the rhythm of Hannibal’s breathing tilts slightly from deep and steady to something a fraction faster, heart speeding up in such a way that he knows Will can feel it _thrum_ under his skin.

“Will-”

“Just… don’t say anything. Let me think.”

His fingers continue to play amongst the soft strands, occasionally plunging deeper to brush nail against flesh.

“Willia-”

“Quiet. Unless you want me to stop?”

He most certainly did not. Tension winds itself snake-like through his muscles as he resolves to stay still, but he cannot stop the thrum entirely, for Will’s affection is far too rare a gift. And quiet. He stays very much quiet, breath drawn in slowly through the mouth to exhale softly through the nose. Controlled. He doesn’t feel it. He looks down without tilting his head to see an abundance of brown curls hiding Will’s expression, and he knows in that moment that they are simply communicating by touch and pulse, rather than poetic deception. As if it were possible for Will to furrow his brows and bite his lip through the sharp snags of his fingernails against pliable flesh. It is their brand of insinuation all the same.

“Quid pro quo.” Will eventually says, voice even and words rehearsed. “You send me away to a mental hospital because you couldn’t bring yourself to kill me and be done with your little games. I send somebody to kill you. You send somebody to kill me. I gut you emotionally. You gut me physically. I blow your mind by travelling by boat to hunt you down, taking a detour by your place of birth to know you better. You try pry open my skull to eat mine as you feel that in the end, this is the only way I’ll ever truly let you in. We both take a detour thanks to Mason. You send yourself away to a mental hospital because I couldn’t bring myself to kill you and be done with your little games. Full circle.”

As he speaks, his fingers arch into claws and run bluntly down Hannibal’s chest, each snag making him twitch in a way that might have been understandable if Will were curled up in the armpit of anybody else. But this is Hannibal Lecter, and his flinches have the power to move mental mountains and grant power, and Will knows he will dream of the way his pectoral muscles spasm under his fingertips, between the lashes of abstract red and the stink of decay and the stag and _everything else_. There will be an image of Hannibal, suspended in the chaos, naked and beautiful and sculpted from the destruction he so lovingly creates with his existence.

Will’s words are muffled slightly, and even though Hannibal can’t clearly see, not _really_, he knows Will is worrying his lips between his teeth. It’s a habit he often employs when mulling over voicing something he has long-since decided on.

“We are truly inseparable, and every-” _yank _“-single-” _scratch _“person who has tried to pull up apart has known a pain unlike anything even we have managed to inflict on each other. Enough, pain between us, Hannibal, enough heartache.”

His voice wavers slightly, a tight line of emotion threaded between each syllable, stringing them together, forcing him to finish what he started as the words tumble from him. “You wanted me here, and here I am. I wanted to be here, and here we are.”

Hannibal’s throat clicks as he moves to rest his chin on the top of Will’s head, his mouth dry as he realises Will will allow it. He mentally screams at himself not speak, and yet as always he cannot help himself, nor the hope that oozes thick and sweet. “All of me. For… All of you?”

Will nods roughly, his unkempt beard agitating Hannibal’s skin until it blooms pink from the sudden movement, and sends static bliss down his spine. “All of me. For all of you.”

His hand leaves Hannibal’s chest hair with a smooth, lingering cat-like caress, and his fingertips brush lower, the sensation light and joyous. Will’s hand dips below the waistband of Hannibal’s pyjamas and it pleases him to find humid, charged heat waiting for him. Hannibal’s right arm tightens around Will’s waist, keeping him close as he opens his mouth to speak, but then thinks better of it. He can’t tell if Will is in the mood to tease or...

“But...” Will says, words steadier now and with purpose, tone dipping until Hannibal’s blood chills.

A cold spike of uncertainty runs up Hannibal’s spine as he freezes, Will’s exploring fingertips finding his erection. Without hesitation the pressure gradually increases, until with his first two fingers alone he smoothly guides Hannibal’s foreskin down to expose the crown of his glans to the damp, body-heated air between them.

“There are pieces of me missing, pieces you _stole_ with your flashing lights and fuck knows what else as my brain boiled. I know a piece of you still expects… _demands_ a reasonable rate of return after I betrayed you. I need to find myself as you once found me. Victorious. I need to stitch myself back together until the pieces fit. You need to return them to me. And then…?”

“And then?” Hannibal breathes as Will’s hand moves back up again to cup the head of his dick and _squeeze, _the flesh slippery with their sweat. He jolts as Will closes his eyes, watches unblinkingly and runs his tongue over the front of his teeth as Will shudders for him in turn.

“It’s as you said, Hannibal. All of me, for all of you. _All_ of me. Give me my memories back. Return them to me. All of them. Every single, last one you stole.”

Another thick swallow, his mouth dry and teeth itching as Will suddenly sits up, his flesh rippling with tension from being suddenly left alone. He almost makes to protest, but then Will speaks and his voice vibrates with desire, pure, undeniable want, and he stills again. “Wait here. I’ll be gone for a few minutes. Close your eyes. Don’t move.”

Hannibal closes his eyes reluctantly, allowing himself the small comfort of knowing Will had promised to come back. His last image of Will burns into the back of his eyelids – the cant of the hips, the sly, upturned twist of his lips, and he knows he will draw him in furs, nude and glorious before a raging fireplace, every bit as pornographic as his imagination will allow. He wonders how deep a red Will would blush if the picture was then mounted over said fireplace.

He hears the zip of the tent and knows the door-flap has been left open slightly, flying open to the wind; it hits the canvas hard and with a heavy rhythm that mirrors the thudding of his heart and the pulsing of his arousal. Over and over and _over again –__ he knows he will eventually take him as such._

Will is gone then, dressed in little more than his sleepwear. Out into the silent night and gentle snowfall and what a pretty, visceral image that makes for him - he imagines gooseflesh and refracted light, and the almost pitch black of the sky high above as the forest around him swallows him whole. He would be in his element, for none suited William Graham better than the dead-set tranquillity of the wild in winter, the base, _primal_ sense of belonging. He wonders if Will had ever walked outside his property in Wolf Trap, naked by moonlight, his pack trailing obediently at his heels. His jaw aches with the clenching that comes from such an image, and he _throbs_.

He sucks in another solid breath through his nostrils, teeth refusing to unlock, nerves juddering with the repeated urge to follow him outside and hunt him down. He will wait. Because Will asked him to. _He will wait_. _WAIT_.

Their time together since the fall has ever grown thicker and thicker with implication, the subtle drawing and writhing together of their spirits and euphoria sits heavy and immovable in his stomach as he begins to comprehend Will’s words more fully in his absence. He allows the trickle of hope, of pure need to run riot down his skin, leaving imagined fire in its wake, for it pleases him to know _pleasure_ and pleases him more to have what should surely be a rare chance to lead by demonstration. He will have him. In any way Will allows.

Every touch they had shared so far has been light and lingering, but otherwise fairly innocent and free of anything weightier than the simple act of being and guarding; instinctual and selfless. The repetitive, simple, clean motions of caring for a sick companion and attending to their well-being in their stead as their senses and strength leave them. The careful, _genuinely_ caring doting though – Hannibal had not anticipated this, not from Will. It left him shaking in places he hadn’t felt such tremors in _years_.

Although his attraction had never strayed too far as to be unreachable from the way he held onto Will as the shadows lengthened in their bedroom, he had respectfully compartmentalised his wants and needs alongside Will’s, and found to his satisfaction they were often one and the same and very much attuned to the other. He licks his lips as he ponders this – how could the fact that Will wanted him at this point come as a surprise? And yet it did, he shivers again, lips twitching as he hears Will return. His beautiful, marvellous boy, standing upright on sliced heels and stronger for it in the end. It’s a shame his motivations are still so unclear and unpredictable. He wants… but why?

“You did as I asked and stayed exactly as I left you.” Will says, voice even as he zips the tent back up to banish the elements. A single blink of his closed eyelids, and the spell would be irreparably broken, but how he wants and aches and needs; he knows he would rather gouge them out entirely than risk it.

“Yes. Trust does not come easily, to either of us after so many bruises, but I meant what I promised you. And you’ve asked for so little.”

“We will see.” Will answers, dropping something hard and plastic onto Hannibal’s stomach. Hannibal’s fingers bunch into the blanket, his brow furrowing – he could never quite resist a good mystery. Will’s voice pulls him away from the temptation to explore the item. “And are you willing to indulge me? You owe me one last _good_ retaliation, I think.”

Hannibal nods, the motion abrupt and singular, resolute if only to steel himself for whatever comes next, for he certainly won’t deny Will. Not at this point. Not ever again, either, he is shocked to find. Remarkable, manipulative boy.

“You sent the Dragon after my wife, and although I accept she isn’t mine any longer, you caused her pain, and terror, and uncertainty. You were so keen to take her place, I would say it’s only fair for you to accept a small measure of what you put her through as penance. Fear? Pain? Those she took in her stride, for she _could_. But you made her vulnerable, and though Molly is but a memory, in all my time with her, I had never seen her bend so much an inch in the face of anything. And yet, you made her. All to prove a point. You broke her pride, Hannibal. My fierce wife, you took that from her. So I will collect yours in turn.”

“Whatever you like, Will.” It sounds far more like a vow than he was sure Will had ever heard from his wife to start with, alter or not, and the mere mention of her bubbles hot bile in his stomach. Brave woman. Stupid woman. Kind woman. He acknowledges that his jealousy of her is less to do with the fact that she had taken something he wished to claim wholeheartedly for himself, and more she shone bright enough to occupy Will’s attention at all, in any way, shape or form. Remarkable.

“I want you to shed your personsuit and make yourself completely and utterly vulnerable for me. Show me how to touch you, something honest and genuine. No theatrics. No personsuit. I will not restrain you, your chains are to be made of willpower and the determination to please me. Keep your eyes closed, and give me your genuine pleasure Hannibal.”

Hannibal hears the audible clench of Will’s throat as he swallows, mouth dry. “And no matter what you hear, or feel, do. Not. Open. Your. Eyes.”

Now wasn’t that an interesting request? Hannibal clenches his jaw with more force as he works the blanket down below his hips, treating Will to an unobstructed view of what he so calmly demands as his pants are taken down in the same motion. He hears the slight lilt in the man’s breath as he is steadily exposed to scrutiny, and in turn wonders just how he will be giving his so called pound of flesh to even their retaliations out once and for all. He is already hard and expectant, and since Will so nicely asked, will make himself seen. A show without a show? Well, he thinks lazily, stretching out across their makeshift bed, he was never one for modesty anyway.

He starts with a light massage to his neck, both hands coming up slowly to cup under his chin, the meat of his thumbs caressing lightly at either side of his throat. His fingers dig in more insistently at the back of his neck, nails raking as he sighs away his tension. The shedding of his so called personsuit takes time, and luckily, they have _oodles_.

Will watches quietly as those hands became steadily more insistent, tracing down to Hannibal’s collarbones, pale flesh blushing beautifully in the wake of pressure. Hannibal’s lips part to reveal the sharp points of his teeth as he lets his head roll back onto their pillow, a quiet, deep rumble in his chest breaking the quiet moment. His movements are liquid and luxurious, and for all Will’s imagination, he may as well be watching Hannibal sprawl across a decadent four post monstrosity of a bed instead of the pile of blankets in their tent.

Hannibal brings his knees up and bends them to dig his heels into the sheets underneath him, and Will watches with rapt fascination as Hannibal’s dick bobs against the solid plain of his stomach, leaving a clear, glistening strand behind. He isn’t sure which of them shudders more at the reaction – he himself who stands with quiet authority, watching and appreciating and demanding without saying another word, or Hannibal who has relaxed so completely into the trappings of self worship, enjoying the novelty of existing to please and in turn feel pleasure.

Hannibal feels Will move to his side, returning to the same position he lay in before he left the tent. The plastic item that still sits upon his stomach impends his path downwards, and Will seems to sense this and removes it entirely, lest Hannibal feel the temptation to touch and explore.

“You’re just… beautiful...” Will mutters, tone caught between bitterness and reverence, and how Hannibal aches to feel the words pressed against his chest once again. His stomach is taught, poor diet and stagnation having whittled his once solid body down, but Will’s quiet approval only betrays the hunger and intensity of his concentration and it pleases him to know that even whilst diminished, he is enough to evoke desire. His knuckles move across the hair on his chest, mirroring Will’s own movements from before, and he feels more than hears Will exhale through his nose at the motion. The discovery of this weakness of his pleases him. Pleases them both.

“It is said that beauty often lies within the eye of the beholder, Will.” Hannibal remarks, tugging on his chest hair slightly just to hear the shake of Will’s resolve.

“Oh yeah?” Will breathes in response, his tongue flicking out over Hannibal’s nipple. The man jerks suddenly, and Will grins to himself to see Hannibal’s lips twist. _Was that a pout? __Is Hannibal fucking Lecter pouting?_

“My William… I have beheld you often, and found you...-” he whispers, stomach tensing further as he runs the palms of his hands slowly down his ribs, “-_exquisite.”_

There is a plastic clack sound which he recognises to be the sound of a lid opening, and he pauses for a moment. He raises his eyebrows in thought when Will says nothing – somehow, the fact that he is blinded to his surroundings numbs him slightly to the fact that he is also in full view of Will’s searching eyes, and therefore as open as a glass tome.

His movements resume. His fingers test the pliancy of his own flesh, and Hannibal finds himself satisfied as his hands move lower over his stomach. Alana had not allowed him to starve, but the nutritional value of what so call _food _he had been served had been lacking, and both muscle and fat had well and truly been sacrificed. The silver lining, he muses, listening to the unsteady rhythm of Will’s breathing (exhaled through the nose, not quite as controlled as the man believed he was being), was that when Dolarhyde’s bullet had taken him down, the exit damage had been far less than he had initially expected. Had Crawford put a bullet in him all those years ago, he wouldn’t have been so lucky.

His scar, he knew, sat precisely between his kidney and intestine, and he couldn’t regret the silver button of raised tissue as he had always so admired the matching ones at Will’s shoulder. He feels his cheeks redden, hands pausing as his thumb catches the ridge of the wound, the texture suddenly shifting from supple and forgiving to knotted and slightly abrasive. He knows Will has paused too. His breathing has stopped, and he hears him swallow, over and over as though trying to clear his throat without drawing attention to the fact that he was doing so.

“This...” Hannibal sighs breathlessly, “...this doesn’t need to be our arrangement Will. Your presence, and-”

Air rushes into his lungs as Will pinches his chest at one side, directly below his collar bone, the abrupt stinging sensation parting his lips at the sudden contrast from pleasure to pain. More clacking sounds, and a brighter, sharper pain that feels more like heat than anything else blooms from the area between Will’s fingers. It is not altogether displeasing, though his curiosity burns alongside whatever it was Will had seen fit to bestow. The flesh is released. The pain lingers and lingers, tight and unrelenting; it curls in his stomach, and he scrunches his eyes up to resist opening them. His breathing settles after a moment, mind over matter over desire. He nods, taking it for what it is – a gift and a warning, wrapped up in the same morbid ribbon. Will always had thought he talked too much. He had just pretended to be ignorant of this fact.

Hannibal’s hands finally find his erection, and though the persistent stinging still holds the bulk of his attention, a deep rumbling sound escapes him. It ripples up from his lungs and becomes distorted and more visceral as the sound reverberates through teeth clenched tightly about his tongue. How else could he possibly stay quiet? He knows it will be bloody soon. He knows Will’s lips are dry at being granted sway over him, who for all intents and purposes is and always will be a monster. He knows, should he be granted the privilege of kissing him…

And oh, how that thought _burn__s_, even as Will pinches him again and again, further and further down the right-hand side of his chest. Even with the icey-odd accompanying pain left in the wake of his touch. It lingers and is purposeful, and he can smell the iron of his rising blood, welling up in delicate beads which do not run to escape their punctures, more, they stay still and orb-like, and he finds himself loathe to move and disrupt them. He gasps and can resist no longer - his right hand squeezes with enough force to mark the delicate silk-smooth skin at the base of himself whilst his left trails back up to caress where Will had in turn, marked. Will allows this exploration, and Hannibal can feel the judder of his excitement and the shiver of hot skin.

He groans again as his nails lightly catch the edge of something pointed and metal, the jostling sending another hot-sick-wave of almost indigestion undulating under his skin, and his fingertips came away wet confirming his suspicions – blood has been drawn here and the thought that he has to keep his eyes screwed shut and miss seeing Will’s wrath for himself is _unforgivable_. And yet, he _allows_ it. With the wounds disturbed, the scent of his lifeblood stings his nostrils, and he feels tears bead in the corners of his eyes, drawn forth strong from the well of emotion that swirls in his gut. His Will. In all his ruthless splendour. He will ever be _magnificent_.

The two of them lay side by side, skin plastered together without an inch to spare, and their breath mingles until even Hannibal cannot differentiate between their individual beings. Will’s wrath lacks any of the usual frill or pomp of his regular lures, and they are much smaller than those he had tampered with oh so long ago. But… they are undoubtedly hooks, strung together by a single piece of line that extends away from him. He licks his lips and feels a gentle tug and he lets loose a sound that is closer to a whimper – he allows this, allows the vulnerability to shine through, for this is undoubtedly what Will demanded of him. Will had pierced his chest with his _hooks_, and from the length of the line remaining, he can only hope and prey and beg there will be more to come.

Will reaches out to him, placing an ever so slightly smaller hand over Hannibal’s larger where he grips himself tightly, unmoving. “I said show me, Hannibal. Continue. For my pleasure.”

As if he could deny him. Hannibal can only nod, the motion jerky as his hand begins to move slowly, warmth bubbling within him until it reaches bones and goes beyond to soul. Will’s hand feels heavy, a sheet of lead encased around his grip, and he feels heavier than anything Hannibal has ever lifted before. But... his dearest hardly imposes his influence in dictating his motions at all, and the thought crackles and plunders what little of his own influence he has remaining. The conflict between what is his own to give and what is Will’s to take leaves him breathless – how can he still be panting and writhing when Will has taken everything including his oxygen?

“To answer the questions you were going to ask… This moment between us, here and now,” Will begins, his voice low and tempting, “I am less tied down by your manipulations than I have ever been. You’re not forcing anything on me, and I’m not reacting as I am though any twisted sense of obligation.”

“Then… explain...” Hannibal grinds out, all stuttering syllables as he pulls lightly against the hooks piercing his skin. Even if Will wanted him to stop playing with them, he doubts he would be able to. Like constantly tonguing an ulcer in the inside of your mouth. Will lowers his head down until his chin rests against Hannibal’s shoulder, tone whispered and conspirational.

  
“Why, sweetheart, it’s as you said earlier. Do I honestly think, right now with your hand around your dick, you’re really registering the pain at all? Or-” Will’s tongue springs out to swipe at a bead of blood (or was it sweat? He could hardly tell any more), “do you too lack the agony of choice, pinned down and spread for me as you are? Do you feel a certain kinship, perhaps, with the fish I caught?”

“Have you reconsidered, then?” Hannibal breathes accusingly as Will’s hand leaves him to add another hook, this one perilously close to his nipple. Between the pleasure and the nipping shock as the tip of the unbarbed end skewers him, he can hardly tell the difference between the two any more, and Will’s mastery of the moment resonates deep in his chest, barbed there too for all the damage it would cause if he attempted to dislodge his awe.

A swell of pride adds to the heat pulsing inside of him – his dear Will, once so lost and fragile, now a beast of want with the control to take and take and _take_ and forgo the petty, threadbare trappings of guilt. Wonderful and majestic, and everything he had ever hoped he could become – art of the masters themselves would be laid to waste in his stead. “I offered you an outlet. I offered you… _I will give you, willingly_-”

“I am considering.” Will interrupts, though he does so with honest words that make Hannibal’s catch uneasily in his throat. Will is suspended, tortuously, between watching the deepening creases of Hannibal’s eyes as the strain of restraint pulls away whatever layers of his personsuit he still clings to, and the clear string of his impending pleasure that has started to matt the silvery hairs of his stomach together. Suddenly, his mouth isn’t so dry any more.

“Considering? Oh dearest, there is much for me to show you, so, so much.” His pleasure is spiking, spiking-

“You’re making quite a mess. What’s to be done about that?” Will retorts, reaching out to dab at the glistening pool just below Hannibal’s bellybutton. The tip of his thumb comes away wet, the strand that follows reluctant to let him go, for he was finally indulging in his desires and the very brickwork of Hannibal’s being responded and _demanded_. Hannibal shudders and curls closer to him, clinging without even laying a hand on the man in turn. Spirit calls to spirit, and his call could be likened more to a beast than anything else.

“_Anything_, Will.”

“Anything?”

“And if I asked you to reduce me down? Break me apart, until the pieces you stole, unrecognisable but still so evenly edged were returned, the jigsaw of my psych remoulded into...”

“Into sheer, radiant magnificence. I would take all that you were and are and reshape you. The light within you glistens and refracts against all your sharpest edges, and you are, and _will be enchanting_. And _then_...”

“_And then_?”

“I would devour you whole-” Hannibal gasps as his orgasm cascades to drown him. His back arches up, heels digging in until the flesh whitens, a whine caught like shards of shattered glass in his throat. At his very peak, as the pleasure threatens to reduce all that he is to a mere creature of indulgence, Will pinches his nipple firmly between cruel forefinger and thumb, and sets the last hook in place as Hannibal’s lips curl back and his head tilts back in sweet agony. His eyes shoot open, unseeing as his release hits the underside of his chin, and Will gasps at the animal violence in it. His head bobs down to suckle where it drips thickly from Hannibal’s throat, shimmering, refracting wetness caught in the beginnings of the man’s beard.

The tension in Hannibal’s limbs loosens gradually over time, the twitching and jerking becoming minute tics as Will continues to reach across him, pinching his flesh with cruel rhythm as he goes. He pierces each stolen mound of flesh with gleaming steel, until he had simply run out of retribution to bestow, and is in turn satisfied.

He doesn’t tell Hannibal to close his eyes again, for his own are locked onto the blood-filled areas of blush that run down both sides of Hannibal’s chest. There are ten on either side, twenty in all, with the first starting up by his collarbones and the last laying between his bottom-most ribs, where the skin had less give and he had to work harder for his satisfaction. Hannibal has yet to say anything. His head lolls back on his pillow, and he finds he is content to let Will do as he feels he must do, for his vengeance is in itself beautiful and the tears he holds stubbornly at the corners of his eyes are less for the pain and discomfort, and more for having being given the gift, the privilege of being Will’s canvas, for isn’t is said that the Artist only finds himself through hues previously unexplored and plundered?

He feels blood trickle down under his spread arms, each puncture bestowing unfettered sanctity. “I would very much like to… that is… if you’re…” Oh and how he is for once lost for words.

Will tilts his head, eyes still drawn between his work and Hannibal’s still semi-hard dick. He finds it amusing that the man who holds himself with far more grace than every person he had ever met combined, could still, _still_, look so put together with his skin covered in blotches, blood and his own carnal mess. “I would like you to.” He doesn’t even let Hannibal explain just what he was trying to request. He simply agrees.

Hannibal reaches over with his left hand, pausing when Will reaches back to stop him. Will’s hand curls around his own, fingers pushing at fingers until Hannibal’s hand becomes a fist held in mid-air, suspended and quivering. Will smiles sadly, feeling the bones tremble where he holds them.

“I’m sure you would accept me as I am, here and now, Hannibal, but let’s not pretend I am half the man that pushed us both over the edge of that cliff. He is the one you fell in love with.”

“He lays beside me now, too stubborn to let me touch him.” Hannibal quips.

“No, not quite. I fell in love with him too, Hannibal. I can feel his absence in the halls of my mind.”

“You command the doors.”

Will laughs, the sound hollow as he pulls the long length of line from where it connects most of the hooks together, until all twenty are connected. The dull ache in Hannibal’s chest blooms fresh at their alignment being corrected, and Will watches as Hannibal blinks slowly, ever the big cat tolerating the transgression. He pulls back and sits up straight, noting the goose-flesh that lines Hannibal’s ribs just as well as his hooks do. “No Hannibal. _YOU_ command the doors. You always have, and some have been locked since the encephilitis.”

“Then...” Hannibal replies, wetting his lips and sitting up slightly, “I can only assume you chose hooks for a reason? You have demonstrated your resourcefulness.”

Will waves his hand dismissively, the other reaching out to touch Hannibal’s pierced nipple gingerly. “The fish...”

“Ah.” Hannibal nods, stretching. “You even described falling as such, the moment in which you were caught in a moment of perfection, and now it keeps your nightmares recurring with what-ifs.”

Will finally meets his eye, his shoulders sagging heavily. “Hooks… I figured…”

“Have you ever heard of suspension before, Will?” Hannibal asks. In the torchlight, his features look sharp enough to cut, but the hand he places gently at Will’s shoulder speaks of gentle, reverent devotion. Will simply nods. “When you asked me to reduce you down into the sum of your parts and rebuild you, were you simply asking me in the ‘heat of the moment’ as you call it, or were you asking seriously?”

“I asked seriously.”

“And… Do you trust me enough to do as you’ve asked? Would you willing sit before my strobe once again?”

Will cringes, his whole body jerking under Hannibal’s touch. He wants him. He wants, and he _aches_. “Every fibre of my being tells me not to, rebels at the idea, sickens me. And yet...”

Will shakes his head as though physically pulling himself away from the shroud of his own doubt, and then places his hand over Hannibal’s. “I do. I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t want it. _Need_ it. And yet...”

“Never be ashamed to ask for what you need Will. I can, and _will_ always provide for you. There is too much past between us for this to be an easy transition I have to agree, but I too meant what I said. All of me, for all of you. I only ask that you allow me the privilege of showing you.”


End file.
